25 Days to Make a Difference

I just read Laura's blog 25 Days to Make a Difference. Very inspiring. Let's see how many ways I've tried to make a difference since Thanksgiving time and then if I try harder between now and Christmas will I make it to 25?

1. Bought pre packaged food for food bank at Hannaford's Grocery Store
2. Bought my Christmas cards through Roswell Park to support cancer patients
3. Sent $100 donation to my daughter's Food and Nutrition class to help buy supplies for rolls and bread to be donated to the Rescue Mission/Food Bank
4. Sent donation to Roswell Park
5. Feed the birds a variety of food-corn, peanuts, suet and a variety of seeds
Hmmm not as many as I had thought...I'll have to think about this.
6. Played the rice game tonight and sent the link to both my children and if it's not blocked by our school filter I'll add it to my school web page.
7. Bought jeans and socks for a needy child and wrapped it up
8. Bought gloves for the mitten/glove tree at work
New additions from Sun/Mon
9. Went to http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/home.faces?siteId=6&link=ctg_lit_home_from_ars_home_sitenav and clicked on each of the tags.
10. Went to the high school Christmas concert even though my daughter quit the orchestra this year.
11. My husband snow blew the end of the neighbor's driveway.
12 My daughter donated 1000 grains of rice. I donated 700.
13. My daughter spent most of Sunday baking-bread for dinner and a gift for me to give as well as Christmas cookies that she will give to her physical therapist on her final day this week and I'll give to coworkers.
Tuesday
14. Today I made a donation to a student whose mother passed away this week from cancer.
15. I chaperoned a concert and I ran off fun Christmas sheets for the students to do while waiting to go on stage.
Wednedsday
16. Tried to give blood but iron count a little too low but my son was able to give.
17. My son made 5 loaves of beer bread. 4 of them will be given as gifts.
18. Wrote notes of appreciation to two people I work with.
Thursday
19. When I wanted to write sub plans for the first day after vacation and teachers and students stopped in and said I need help with..... I just smiled and said let me see if I can help. The plans will get done over vacation and I'll email them to a coworker.
20. I'm at a new building this year and the secretary has made me feel very welcome and has helped me out many times. I wrote her a thank you note today and gave her a Christmas present that I would have loved to have kept for myself!
I'm finishing this post up Dec. 28 with the last few things I did before Christmas but with getting ready to go out of state for the holidays where I know have limited access to the internet I just didn't have time to finish this list.
21. The last week before vacation I showed my second trough fifth graders screen shots of Laura's site and told them about Laura. I added a blog to my own site where the kids could write their own ways of making a difference and gave them a chance to answer Laura's questions as well.
22. I also showed several of my classes the site Freerice.com and gave them time to win rice.
23. When traffic was backed up at an intersection because a school bus making frequent stops, I let several cars go through the stop sign and cut in front of me.
24. My husband and I planned and made Christmas Eve dinner for his family in Iowa.
25. I helped with the Christmas dinner dishes and clean up as much as my husband's family would let me.

Well, I think if I try hard and brainstorm with my kids I'll make it to 25 by Christmas.
Next year I'll have to give this some thought on how to use it with my students. If the 700+ students each did 25 good deeds that would certainly make an impact on our small rural NY community.

Time

Tonight's plans were to stay home, crank the Christmas music and wrap presents and start working on Christmas cards. But instead once my husband and daughter left for a hockey game I collapsed on the coach with the lap top and spent the evening browsing more wikis/blogs. Tonight I was checking out Cool Cat Teacher and reading her post to Newbies. (Notice I have links and tags now.) I also followed a link to a teacher in China. From there I went to voki.com and played around making a character to stick on my blog for awhile. Before I knew it the family was home and I hadn't moved. It leads me to wonder if the people that have these wonderful sites with so many great resources have spouses and children. If they do how do they manage it all? I saw the Cool Cat Teacher had Sink Refections as a recommended reading. I never read the book but I have read the Fly Lady's web site and followed her system in the past. I still get the daily emails. Maybe I should try getting back on that track and maybe that would help.

On a totally different note I love the noise of busy students working together on various projects. That sure beats trying to get everyone to stay in their seats and finish assignments on their own quietly. I just wish I had them longer than 40 minutes every six days. By the time you take off the time it takes them to log on and off I have them less than 35 minutes. Some days we don't get too far.